Affiliations: National Press Club, Washington - National Press Club of Australia - Overseas Press Club, New York - London Press Club - Foreign Correspondents Club, Hong Kong - Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand - International Association of Press Clubs, Dubai - International Press Club of Chicago

National Press Club member Tony Haas’ 50 year career as a South Seas public intellectual was capped in the remote New Zealand valley of his childhood with the publication of his book Being Palangi-My Pacific Journey.

The autobiography begins with Haas’ paternal grandfather, a prominent Bundestag figure of the inter war era telling his son, Haas’ father, to put as much distance as possible between he and Germany.

Which is what happened with Haas Snr settling in New Zealand and then taking up a farm near Pahiatua in a region itself geographically distant, the Wairarapa Valley.

Haas charts his own Jewish raising in the secular New Zealand, and how as a student at Victoria University, Wellington, he was to identify his trademark cause of Pacific multi culturalism which he was to pursue as researcher, publisher, broadcaster, writer, traveller, family man, and all-purpose advocate.

Also chronicled is how Haas fell under the spell of fellow journalist Michael King the pre-eminent chronicler of his era of the Maori experience. He recounts how he vowed then, with King’s encouragement, to do for Oceania what King had done for New Zealand.Pacific stars: Long time Wairarapa local politician Bob Francis attentive while launcher-in-chief broadcaster Ian Johnstone outlines Haas’ life and times, and Mandarin Rob Laking listens, as does Haas, and United Nations Lebanon-based refugee topsider Ross Mountain.

Safety & Security

in Contrived News*

How serious are no-go areas in relation to their coverage by mainstream media?They are all the more pervasive just because they have become an accepted as part of the scene. Therefore they do not stand out. They are not viewed as being unusual, or out of place.

Some examples?The most worrying aspect of these no-go areas is that there are so many of them. Here’s one to start with. When it was officially disclosed that in New Zealand there were 40 people under surveillance by the security services, there should have been instigated by the media at the very least a debate on the nature and provenance of the individuals being watched.

You could say that the admission that in a sparsely populated nation that there were 40 people under surveillance was disturbing in itself?It was a very candid admission and pretty much corresponds to a non-disclosed number of quite a few more. We have to assume these fall into the lesser security category of persons of interest.

This hardly constitutes a pattern of no-go areas?If you want a very large-scale and set-piece no go area then you have to consider the Paris climate conference. It was treated with the type of hushed reverence that was once accorded royal events such as coronations. There was no disclosure of the immense and embarrassing tensions at the conference. Instead there was the old rote style of reporting in which the word “historic” was such a recurring feature. I would have liked to have known details, for example, of who was there from this country, and who was paying for them to be there?

Let’s have more examples to make still more visible this pattern?This no-go syndrome is far too easily ascribed to the delicacies of political correctness and this is certainly an element in the toadying, conformist, correct and polite coverage of something like the Paris event. Timing is also a big part of this. For example earlier in 2015 the round of pay increases to politicians triggered immense and justified media ire. At the end of the year, when the mainstreamers were not watching, were distracted, the pay boosts went through and without a murmur.

What are these distractions?The distractions are made up of pre-programmed and large scale events. Sport hardly surprisingly is the central one here. It is so much part of the mainstream wallpaper that news practitioners fail to notice it. For example you are watching the news on television which is mainly about sport. At the conclusion, the newsreader says “and now we have the sport” when all you have been watching has been about sport.This is hardly something new in the news?It has become intensified because of the mainstreamers turning themselves inside out as they seek to hug popular culture in all its manifestations and this really is the heart of the matter. Its most obvious manifestation is the embracing of entertainment and sport.

You are always going on about market-forces and such like and isn’t this what we are talking about here?Let me narrow this down. We are talking about news which is in fact contrived in that it is a pre-programmed event such as a ball game. One side must win. The other must lose. So the outcome also is 50 percent pre- programmed. It is very much pre-packaged and it is the news equivalent of bubble-wrapped pour-on instant convenience foods.

Some might say that you will soon recommend the return of classified advertising on the front page?In this fingering of the dominance of pre-packaged and pre-programmed news I am in good company. Paul Henry for one (pictured speaking to the National Press Club in 2011). In his autobiography he relates how when he was working for the government television news, there was this intense focus on having the news crystallised as long as possible before it was presented.. When there was spontaneous news, actual news, it threw this pre-programmed contrived format into inconvenient disarray.

Brazil Envoy Emphasises

Language & Cultural Objectives

The 193rd anniversary of the independence of Brazil drew as guests National Press Club president Peter Isaac and newsmakers Bill and Donas Nathan (pictured). Sometime soldier, IT executive, state protocol official and impresario Mr Nathan’s work in the performing arts corresponds with the Brazil embassy in Wellington work in supporting Polynesian and Latin American cultural links.

Meanwhile Ambassador Eduardo Gradilone drew attention to the accelerating Brazil/New Zealand student exchange scheme – an indicator of the flourishing relationship between the two countries.He also spoke of the value in this of New Zealanders learning Portuguese and Brazilians learning English. With over 200 million speakers worldwide Portuguese is a substantially more widely spoken language than for example French.

Brazil opened an Embassy in Wellington in 1997 taking the initiative in the New Zealand Government’s Latin American Strategy announced in August 2000. This was followed up with the establishment of the New Zealand Embassy in 2001 which reinforced a trade office opened in São Paulo in 1999.

The 20th annual gathering of Central Districts/ Wellington region journalists this year also served as a milestone for perpetual host New Zealand Farmer editor Jon Morgan's own half century in harness.

He signed on under the old cadet apprenticeship scheme in his teens and soon began specialising in rural and agribusiness reporting which has remained his focus ever since. In recent years he has found himself shifting from the press bench to the judges rostrum, adjudicating on exhibits at agricultural shows and field days.

The event also gives his guest-colleagues an insight into their hosts' own pastoral and horticutural skills because the venue is the Morgan's own property in the Horowhenua - Kapiti district.

Clumsy Emails Crash Through News Noise Level

Interview with National Press Club president Peter Isaac

Q: We are now well into the internet age. You were a major player in the predictions industry. Looking back, where would you say you rank?

A: Let us look at my foolish prediction made in this same feature several years ago about the citizen-journalist. I forecast well-intentioned amateurs taking over. In the event what has happened? Almost the opposite. Highly organised special-interest groups such as the Taxpayers Union are making the running. They are the ones revealing the sister-city jaunts and all the other newsworthy elements of local government life that were once a staple of the press. So my prediction of lone-wolves doing the leg work was wrong. What has happened is that doctrinally driven and very organised groups have taken the lead. Not the individuals that I had predicted.

Q: There seems to be this drift to the right in the internet political spectrum?

A: I utterly failed to see this. The evidence of this imminent swing was there to be seen, perfectly clear in the wisdom of hindsight. The chorus of symmetrically similar views from the mainstream print and the broadcast media bored the socks off everyone. Even if they agree with it, people wanted some variety. This came from the right in the form of these agenda emails and blogs. The usual liberal and leftie ones are still there. But they have no pick up.

Q: How did this step-change come about?

A: It had its beginnings in elements of talk-back radio and this is pretty much where it stayed and still stays. But these outfits such as the Taxpayers Union picked up on it, detected the trend, and pursued it.

Q: The Taxpayer Union relies on clumsily designed mass emails to get its counter-message across?

A: This surprised me too. My thinking had revolved around slick web sites padded with entertainment sucrose and with the emails merely calling attention to them. In the event they went direct and the email became the message.

Q: This pick up happened quickly?

A: This surprised me. When I started receiving these emails I thought they were banging their heads on a brick wall. The reason being that the journalistic mentality usually has to be led backwards over a story, rather than have their reportorial faces slammed into it.

Q: Let us turn to the big picture now. You are an old print man. How do you see the chains?

A: The problem for the chains is that the advertising agencies are successfully persuading them to aim at those in their teens, twenties, and thirties.

Q: What is wrong with this demographic?

A: When did you last see anyone under the age of 50 read the print version of a newspaper? They are compounding this with these full front page splashes. This is all the more weird with the Dominion Post which is a broadsheet. They are forever seeking to make the pulling out of a bath plug seem like the sinking of the Wahine. Print must distinguish itself from broadcasting. John Campbell found himself on the eclipse because his bosses kept seeing numbers that indicated that frantic sensationalism was falling as a viewer demand.

Q: Is this pick up of these rightward email news-breakers a long or a short term phenomenon?

A: They are doing the old fashioned leg and tipster work and as long as they do this there will continue to be pick up. Curiously the same thing now applies on the email commentaries, however highfalutin’. The New Zealand Initiative, the rump of the old Roundtable, also now enjoys pick-up via its rather more stylish email bulletins.

Q: Is there a formula here?

A: ACT started it with their cheeky emails. You are about to delete it. Then you think to yourself – better have a look, might be something important . Someone else might see it. Pick it up. The others followed in ACT’s footsteps with these acerbic snippets. Meanwhile our friends on the left of the political spectrum relied on their web sites and their ponderous essays therein.

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Russia will adhere to its traditions regardless of what the West wants it do, thinks it should do, or believes it should do cautioned Major General Peter Williams talking to the National Press Club at the Associated Audio Bose auditorium.

The Russian mind-set and thus approach rests on fear of iinternal fragmentation which in turn pivots on the threat of external intervention, especially full scale invasion. Such fears were justified noted General Williams recalling the British interventionism after World War 1. This was followed by the determination after World War 2 of the West to disrupt the USSR via the Cold War.

This type of damaging intervention continues to this day, he observed, and is characterised for example by the United Kingdom taking in from Russia hundreds of billions of US dollars equivalent which amounted to “dirty money,” declared General Williams.General Williams himself was a Cold War warrior having served with BRIXMIS, the British cross-mission into Soviet held East Germany.

After the collapse of the USSR he went on to lead the NATO Mission to the new Russian Federation.

The Coldstream Guards officer identified the failure of the West to understand the Russia concept of power as central to what he described as the syndrome in which there was the belief that “because they look like us – they must also think like us.”

In the event Russians were most at home with their tradition of centralised monolithic power just because experience had taught them that such unbridled power was the best way to deal with these constant threats of invasion, foreign interventionism, internal fragmentation, and economic collapse.

There was no such thing in the Russian makeup as the notion of the steel fist in the velvet glove. There was no such concept as the Western one about the “abuse of power”.

“In Russia, if you have power. Then you must use it. If you do not use it, then the power that you possess will simply be taken away from you.”

Because of this, Russia was determined to bring back into Mother Russia, what it knew as its “near abroad,” the newly created republics.

In pursuit of this national objective Russia, under its leader Vladimir Putin, would continue to exhibit singularity of purpose by, for example, “reaching out to kill its enemies, regardless of where they are.”

Russia, emphasised General Williams, was not going to change its ways on the whims of the West. Its overarching objective remains to restore its Tsarist “former glories.”

An aspect of Russian life today that constantly bamboozled Western journalists and other observers and analysts declared General Williams was that surrounding the lifestyle of Vladimir Putin himself.

His association with gymnasts and other such contemporary figures in the sports sphere was interpreted in the West as an indication of modernism.

In the event and within Russia such behaviour was regarded as a tough-guy lifestyle, and thus to be respected – and feared.

Committee member Digby Paape with Major General Peter Williams at the National Press Club meeting at the Associated Audio Bose Auditorium in Wellington

Washington-based news agency EIN Presswire has embarked upon a joint venture with the National Press Club. The venture sends news about the New Zealand productive sector to North America and the rest of the world. The arrangement was put together by Max Farndale (pictured at side) publisher of MSC Newswire. It is the affiliate of the Washington news company.

The proprietor of EIN Presswire David Rothstein (pictured underneath) declared that the joint venture was part of his organisation’s world-wide emphasis on the productive sector and especially in manufacturing.

"New Zealand has this reputation in North America and Europe for honesty of purpose blended with an inventive sense of industry. There is now this opportunity of presenting the products of this to the world at large."

The Washington news agency turned to MSC Newswire to develop the channel for New Zealand manufacturer news into the North American market. It was then that Mr Farndale talked to the National Press Club to assist in the venture.

MSC Newswire is the only such organisation in Australasia dealing exclusively in productive sector news. All the other agencies focus on the financial news and politics spectrum.

Mr Farndale observed that New Zealand’s economy rests on its ability to produce products that people need and which are three dimensional..

Since the 1987 crash in which New Zealand lost all its banks and insurance companies along with 150 years worth of accumulated capital, it had ceased to be regarded globally as a repository of financial expertise, an impression confirmed since 2007 when almost all its finance companies had gone to the wall.

“So our focus is on manufacturing, production engineering, and processing, spheres in which New Zealand enjoys a high and sustained reputation.”

The joint venture organised by MSC Newswire has run since the start of the last quarter of 2014. According to Mr Farndale data reveals that over half the audience for the New Zealand productive sector stories is now within North America.

“It is one of those examples of an outsider, in this case Washington’s EIN Presswire, seeing an opportunity that was hiding in plain sight of the locals,” commented Mr Farndale.

MSC Newswire is based in Hawkes Bay which Mr Farndale considers one of the hearts of the productive sector. The company was formed two years ago.

The National Press Club’s role is to use its members own resources to identify products and companies of interest. The club’s newsmaker category includes industrialists, technicians, and administrators in the productive sector.

The procedure is for the New Zealand productive sector stories to enter the project via MSC Newswire and for these stories then to be vectored onto EIN Presswire’s global network.

“It is an example of the kind of leverage that can be obtained through this joint approach. In this case it means that New Zealand’s productive sector news is seen by an audience hundreds of times greater than if the same stories had been restricted to just local consumption,” added Max Farndale

“It overcomes the problem of New Zealand producers marketing back to themselves and to the people who already know all about them, and what they are doing. It has opened up an entirely new world for the productive sector here.”

Auckland Star's

Pat Booth

Incarnated

Ed Asner

Newspaperman

The death of Pat Booth brings to a sharp end the era of the crusading human interest newspaperman.

Pat Booth who has died at the age of 88 was the last practising journalist anywhere in the world to have enjoyed a career that spanned the age in which newspapers flourished unrivalled all the way through to the social networking fractured picture of today.

In his acceptance speech on receiving at Government House the National Press Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award he recalled this transition.

“I came home brimming with a story that I wanted to tell my family. Instead they told me about it.”

They had heard it over the radio.

Pat Booth devoted most of his working life to the Auckland Star, rising to become editor.

During this tour he demonstrated a tenacity that saw him following stories wherever they went for as long as it took, most notably the Arthur Allan Thomas miscarriage of justice.

He bore in aspect and manner an uncanny resemblance to the television news boss played by Ed Asner, by coincidence in real life also an ardent advocate of human causes and who spoke to the National Press Club close to the time when Pat Booth received his award under the aegis of Governor General Dame Sylvia Cartwright.

Pat Booth in his ascent to becoming the nation’s pre-eminent journalist and a household name defied the prevailing belief that journalists had to work outside New Zealand in order to be successful in it.

In writing his last column three years before his death, he also stood in sharp contrast to the industry’s prevailing youth emphasis.

Jill Weyburne1939 - 2017

The death after a long illness of Jill Weyburne brought to an end the life of one of the National Press Club’s most active members. Incisive of mind, she was adept in numerous vocations that also required dexterity, notable in the crafts sphere. These threads coalesced in her remarkable ability in bridge in which she became the New Zealand individual champion.

Jillian Marie Lynskey was born in 1939 into an illustrious New Zealand/ Irish clan. She married 53 years ago Bryan Weyburne at various times a Wellington City Councillor and an enduring mercantilist figure on the capital landscape. He is the National Press Club’s long time secretary- treasurer.

Jill Weyburne (pictured) will be remembered for her energy and her ability in many diverse fields and her willingness to put these at the disposal of the individuals and the organisation that she believed to be of value to the community at large.

National Press Club’s Chris Turver, appointed MNZM is drawn to the very different spheres of action, ideas, and public administration. He was born into strife in the industrial north of England at the height of the Blitz. He went on to become the first official war correspondent from New Zealand at the height of the Vietnam conflict.

As the New Zealand Press Association’s war correspondent of the era he was to touch down on several other conflicts of various intensities, notably in Borneo. He was embedded on the RNZN deployment to Mururoa.

Subsequently Christopher Turver (pictured, above) was to deploy here his own and still earlier experience gained as a pavement-level daily newspaper reporter in his native UK.

His near two decades as divisional editor, notably on the political desk, on Radio New Zealand brought a seasoned print-journalism level of unremittingly disciplined concision and impartiality to RNZ during its glory days before its eclipse by privatisation and then by the audience fractionalisation wrought by the internet.

At the conclusion of this tour of duty his career went anywhere but on the spike. He launched himself into local government as Kapiti district representative on the Wellington Regional Council. He became chief executive of the Royal New Zealand Coastguard Federation. He served on the district health board.

Later his public service career has embraced still further roles in which he has become president of the Paraparaumu RSA and chairman of the Electra Trust which represents district power users.

Christopher Turver JP’s Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit citation was for “services to journalism, local government and the community.”

Death of Clare HollingworthGreatest reporter ofLast Century.

Clare Hollingworth, the outstanding reporter of the last century, has died in Hong Kong at the age of 105.

Her greatest scoop was the announcement of the start of World War 2.

Clare Hollingworth (pictured) was the National Press Club’s International Year of Womens’ Suffrage guest speaker. She was brought to Wellington by the National Press Club in association with the British High Commission.

At that time the war in the Balkans was underway

Miss Hollingworth in her talk to the National Press Club outlined the ethnic and religious rifts and their genesis which were to become so evident in this century.

“Just because your neighbour watches the same television programmes that you watch does not mean that they will share your opinions,” she said.

Miss Hollingworth was the first British female war correspondent.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong announced her death.

''The FCC is very sad to announce the passing of its much beloved member Clare Hollingworth at age 105.”

Clued Up

National Press Club events director Rex Benson and club stalwart David Tossman have something puzzling in common.

Tossman (above) has just completed his 1,000th crossword for the Listener.

Benson (below) meanwhile is on the edge of logging his 970th 'Kropotkin'cryptic for the New Zealand Herald.

In Tossman’s case the crossword is a family affair.

His mother assiduously filled out the puzzle from its inception by Tossman’s predecessor, RWH, who had devised them for the Listener since 1940.

Tossman’s ensuing appointment to the puzzle in 1997 means that in relative terms he is quite new to the job.

The hirsute conundrum hustlers claim meanwhile that they never exchange, well, cross words.

Fidel Castro was a “giant” who saved Cuba from revolving door coups and counter coups declares New Zealander Bernard Diederich who was a close friend of Castro’s since his ascent to power.

Mr Diederich and his wife were on the invitation list for the 10th anniversary of the Cuba revolution.

Had it not been for Castro, emphasises Mr Diederich, Cuba would simply be another “poor and uneducated” Latin nation.

Mr Diederich cites Castro’s intense interest in science and religion as additional, and unrecognised, aspects to the personality of the dictator.

Mr Diederich also emphasises the way in which the Cuban leader deployed his technical people notably doctors throughout Latin America and to the benefit of the poor there.

For many year Mr Diederich ran Haiti's daily paper and was thus eyewitness to the various catastrophes in the region caused by human intervention.

Mr Diederich was for many years in charge of Time Life’s Central America coverage. He was awarded the National Press Club's Lifetime Achievement Award two years ago. He is pictured at the event in Martinborough where his New Zealand family is now based.

He hails from Wellington and is considered now to be New Zealand’s greatest living adventurer. His odyssey started early in World War 2 when he became a boy sailor on the Pamir, the square rigger seized from the Germans.

Considering this too safe, he went on to sail in tankers across the Atlantic.

After the war he hove-to in Port Au Prince, Haiti, where he started his newspaper and began a tortured relationship with the Duvalier dynasty.

Now a resident in Miami, Mr Diederich was to deal on personal terms with all the Central American dictators over the next half century and his books on them are considered standard reference works.

Rendezvous withLe Monde cartoonistJean Plantureux

In a surprise encounter National Press Club president Peter Isaac crossed paths with Jean Plantureux the cartoonist for Le Monde and who is universally known as Plantu. It was in 2007 that Plantu spoke to the club at a meeting in the New Zealand Parliament.

In recent years the cartoonist, a national figure in France, has become dedicated to promoting his cause, jointly founded in 2006 with UN Secretary general Kofi Annan, which is known as Cartooning for Peace.Cartooning for Peace was behind the feature film The Caricaturists which includes Plantu along with a global gathering of cartoonists from around the world, notably from such hot spots for practitioners as Russia, Mexico, Venezuela, China, the Gaza Strip, and Tunisia.

Isaac said he was surprised to find Plantu at the gathering in what appeared to be the routine care of at least six police and he ascribed this to the cartoonist’s insistence that the film be publicly screened in homage to the victims of the religious fanaticism attack on the Paris satirical cartoon newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

The Caricaturists film also includes Plantu’s own role in the Middle East weaving between such protagonists as Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres.

Isaac said that Plantu (at right, above) recalled vividly his visit to New Zealand and his meetings with local cartoonists.

The Labour Party exists only to help poor declared Glenda Jackson MP

“The Labour Party exist for just one purpose,” British Labour MP Glenda Jackson told a National Press Club meeting. “It is to help the poor.”

Her comment came in the aftermath of the introduction of New Zealand to globalisation by the David Lange-led Labour government.

Miss Jackson (pictured at the time of her visit to New Zealand) was one of the very few Labour Party MPs of this era in the Westminster sphere who had sprung from an authentically working class background and having started her own career as a shopgirl.

Britain’s membership of the EU has had the unanticipated effect of being a multiplier of Britain’s intra party rifts especially within the Conservative Party.

Now though the EU in a wrenching display of the power of reverse leverage is pulling apart the British Labour Party as it strips away the layers of tarpaulin camouflage that has tenuously held it together.

Starkly revealed now are it components. There are the real poor who are those in the old rust-belts and fishing towns. Then on the other side of the Labour equation are those who have never been poor, do not intend to be, and who, in the words of UKIP’s Nigel Farage, have never held down “a proper job in their lives.”

It is this last category, mostly based within the London commuter belt, who now stand exposed. They are like the people swimming without togs when the tide goes out.

They are the ones thrilled to their marrows by the concept of Europe, especially the Latin zone such as France with its gauche de la gauche political parties and even a fully-fledged Communist Party.

It is here that an old field revolutionary such as Che Guevara cohort Regis Debray can saunter around between academia and far left political convocations expounding their views on how we live now.

Until just a few days ago the Labour Party could glue together its quite opposing components in the form of the workers and those who were not workers, quite the opposite in fact.

Now this flimsy coalition has burst apart . The non workers especially those who make up most of Labour’s parliamentary wing, were explained away by the notion that they were idealistically-driven. That they intended to use their privilege to serve Glenda Jackson’s poor.

Now though they have been revealed in the eyes of those poor to have been actively working against them.

The have been seen in plain sight to have been encouraging the very wholesale immigration that adds up to cheap labour and thus depressed earnings.

They have been exposed to have been in fact conspiring against Glenda Jackson’s constituency by handing over much of Britain’s fishing grounds to the EU and by seeking to encourage and enable the very immigration that acted counter to the livelihoods of workers.

The game of pretence which has endured since the 1960s has finally ended.

Jeremy Corbyn, himself from a professional class background, has become quite literally its first martyr. The elastic would ultimately only stretch so far. He was unable to reconcile the irreconcilable. He had to step into the light and so did his Labour Party.

New Zealand trophiesOn Display atthe WashingtonNational Press Club

The New Zealand National Press Club’s plaque and accompanying silver salver commemorating the presentation of its Lifetime Achievement Award to long time Dean of the White House Press Corps Connie Lawn are now in the lobby of the Washington National Press Club.

Miss Lawn was for a generation the Washington reporter for Radio New Zealand, a tour of duty featured in her autobiography You Wake Me Each Morning.

Miss Lawn was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006 by Hon Steve Maharey the Minister of Broadcasting at a ceremony in New Zealand’s Parliament .

She was appointed an Honorary Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit from Queen Elizabeth in 2012.

Miss Lawn has presented her New Zealand National Press Club trophies to the Washington National Press Club’s permanent exhibition collection.

President of the Washington National Press Club Thomas Burr and executive director Bill McCarren, are photographed (below) with Miss Lawn’s plaque and silver salver from the New Zealand club.

Founded in 1908, every U.S. president since Theodore Roosevelt has visited the Washington Press Club (pictured), and all since Warren Harding all have become members.

Where are they now?

Sir Anand Satyanand & Dame Margaret Clark

Rt. Hon. Sir Anand Satyanand and Dame Margaret Clark were for many years stalwarts of the National Press Club. Sir Anand relinquished his membership of the club when he was appointed in 2006 New Zealand’s 19th Governor General.

Dame Margaret was an active participant in club operations during the 1990s when it took up public positions on ethical and career issues, most notably those in connection with the tertiary education and training of would-be journalists.

Sir Anand’s vice regal appointment capped a career following his graduation from the University of Auckland as a legal practitioner, district court judge, and Ombudsman in which newsmaker capacity he joined the National Press Club.

Dame Margaret was a pioneer in the then new field of political science and lectured in the subject in the Americas and in Asia prior to returning as professor to Victoria University, Wellington.

In 2010 Victoria University conferred on Dame Margaret the status and title of Emeritus Professor in the School of History Philosophy and International Relations in recognition of her career of valued and distinguished service to the university.

Since the completion of his five year vice-regal term in 2011, Sir Anand has remained active in community affairs notably as chairman of the Commonwealth Foundation, and more recently as patron of the Superdiversity Leadership Council.

Kim Beazley Keynotes at Washington Un-Mooring

Australia’s ambassador to Washington Kim Beazley keynoted at the last farewell to New Zealand’s departing ambassador Mike Moore, reports MSCNewswire’s Connie Lawn, the only journalist admitted to the occasion.

The two former Australasian Labour Party leaders also have in common that Mr Beazley will also shortly be returning to the South Seas, having handed over to the incoming Joe Hockey.

The two larger-than-life populists share quite different backgrounds. Mr Beazley is from a dynastic political family and from an early career in academia. Mr Moore in contrast started his working life as a boy-labourer.

But this has not stopped them from sharing an infectious sense of humour characterised at one joint session by Mr Moore suggesting that Australia become a state of New Zealand.

It was Mr Beazley who bestowed upon Mr Moore the Order of Australia.

Mr Moore’s being confined by a recent stroke to a wheelchair has not curtailed his ambassadorial activities and the prognostication is that it will not be long after his return to New Zealand that he will recover full mobility.

In the photograph by Dr Charles Sneiderman Mr Beazley is shown with Mike and Yvonne Moore.

From the MSCNewsWire reporters' desk

Moore on the move

Mike Moore, the National Press Club's most frequent guest-speaker, is on the move again. In the history of work nobody traveled quite so far as the retiring New Zealand ambassador to the United States.. His working life began as a Northland boy labourer and it reached its pinnacle when he was the titular head of the Planet's business. As head of the World Trade Organisation.. In his typically tell-it-as-it-is style Mike Moore sent this letter, to a wide circle of friends and associates in the United States . . .

20 November 2015

To All Staff and Agencies Washington DC; US Posts and Hon Cons

Yvonne and I are giving notice to MFAT that we will be leaving the Post just beforeChristmas on the 16th December.

Minister Murray McCully and MFAT have been very generous and kind to us.

We have lost a couple of weeks because of tests and surgery that I have had and we will not be able to have the kind of thank you’s that are normal so we will combine the Staff Christmas Party with our farewell to you.

Yvonne and I have made a lot of very special and lasting good friends here and their support and compassion has been wonderful.

I am now the longest serving continuous Ambassador to the US. I didn’t seek this job but felt I should do it because great issues were at stake. The time was ripe for it.

On a security level things have moved up several notches. You are aware of the many exercises we do together and the important contribution we are making in the struggle against ISIS. TPP was the second part of the job and we have worked to getting acceptance for this by Congress. I believe it will be forthcoming. It will be a question of time.

I hope to get around most of you in the next 2 weeks to thank you personally. In my political life I have always been in the wrong place at the wrong time but the mission I was given here was correct and the timing was right.

I want to thank you and your families for your commitment and to apologise for walking past you in the building full of ideas and full of hope.If I forgot to say hello or thank you that was my mistake.

We will go home content that we did our best. Pity the old body gave up.

With love and affection always

Mike and Yvonne

Amazon Picks Up

Lifetime Award

Laureate’s Book

About The Pamir

New Zealand’s greatest living adventurer Bernard Diederich has seen his long incubated book on the four masted barque Pamir published by Amazon. During World War 2 Pamir was seized as a prize of war by the New Zealand government while in port at Wellington. Diederich shipped out on the vessel which under the New Zealand flag sailed to San Francisco and Vancouver.

Later in the war Diederich sailed on T2 tankers carrying fuel to the allied war effort in the Pacific, and subsequently became bosun on cargo vessels sailing between Europe and Africa.

He credits the evocative Pamir as the most enduring trademark of his own sea fever, as he describes it.On a subsequent exploratory sailing jaunt to Haiti he decided to stay there becoming at one and the same time a newspaper publisher and friend and foe of a revolving door catalogue of Central American despots whose tyrannies he chronicled also in a number of books. Only his friend Fidel Castro survives.

He was for many years the Time-LIFE Central America bureau chief. The Miami resident was presented with the National Press Club’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. He is pictured at the time of his investiture.

Where Are They Now?Graham SawyerFrom Studio To Pulpit

Graham Sawyer began his working life as a schoolteacher but succumbed to the lure of the air waves and became a broadcaster for the BBC World Service. After describing the world Mr Sawyer after several years decided to see it for himself first hand and his journeys eventually took him to the South Seas and to the newly emergent independent New Zealand radio news channels.

He joined the National Press Club and was soon elected to the committee. Mr Sawyer’s BBC-style diplomacy was much valued at this time when the club was embarking on a new role in public advocacy. Specifically the club was intervening in the issue of journalistic training which it saw as being dangerously packaged by the tertiary education industry together with public relations.

In the event Mr Sawyer, perhaps seeking more tranquil pastures, embarked on an entirely new career, this time as a cleric.

After early pastoral work in the Horowhenua area, Mr Sawyer returned to Britain and was ordained by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams at Newport, Wales.

Meanwhile Reverend Sawyer now vicar of Burnley, UK. finds his New Zealand journalistic experience valuable in penning his sermons and also in writing his autobiography, provisionally entitled Surplice to Requirements.

The Reverend Sawyer is pictured (at left) talking to Tim Barnett MP at a National Press Club reception for Lord Tebbit who is in the background talking to Mark Burton MP. Television New Zealand’s Jim Greenhough at far left.

Life MemberHonoured

Gavin Ellis, a Life member of the National Press Club, was appointed ONZM in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.

His appointment to the Order was for services to journalism. He is a former editor of the New Zealand Herald.